“There is no passion to be found in playing small—in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” —Nelson Mandela
An image from Lolo Veleko’s “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder” series, looking at personal style among South African youth, on view in gallery G255.
Self-expression, the freedom to write, paint, draw, and photograph what you want, is the essence of both artmaking and democracy. Which is why the CIA held up America’s modern artists during the Cold War as proof of democracy’s superior creative powers. And why black South African artists under apartheid were crucial to organizing opposition while providing a model of community-building for a future, more democratic society.
An image from South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s “Faces and Phases” series of rather direct, even intimate portraits of African lesbians. On view in gallery G255.
The image above, from the MIA collection, is a cropped cover of i-jusi, a South African magazine, acclaimed for its experimental graphic design. It emerged in 1995, a year after apartheid ended, the title translating roughly from Zulu as “juice.” It was among the first and most prominent artistic responses to democracy—Nelson Mandela is front and center in the cover’s illustrated gallery of African cultural heroes—and has since sought to establish an contemporary artistic identity for Africa, apart from Western influence.
At the MIA, a new exhibition called Fashioning Personhood just went up in Gallery G255, on the second floor near the reconfigured African galleries, featuring artists exploring identity in Africa today. Among them are South African photographer Lolo Veleko, whose “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder” series examines fashion and culture among the so-called “born free” generation, the urban youth now coming of age in post-apartheid South Africa. Also featured is Zanele Muholi, a South African activist and photographer whose portraits of black lesbians like herself, looking directly and confidently at the camera, challenge our assumptions based on appearances.
It’s a seemingly simple proposition—don’t judge a book by its cover—and yet it certainly was not simple in South Africa for a long time and still isn’t. Nor is it so simple even here in Minnesota, where gay and lesbian couples won the right to marry just this year, aided by the same proposition: we are already here among you, see us for who we are. A fight for equality, like so many, buoyed by the spirit of Mandela.